The present invention relates generally to wireless communication devices and, in particular, to a communication device employing a method for indicating to a user of the communication device that only a portion of a received message can be displayed to the user.
Display-based wireless communication devices, such as pagers, radiotelephones, two-way radios, and wireless data devices, are well known. Such devices enable users to, inter alia, view received alpha-numeric messages, such as telephone numbers, electronic mail, and short messages. In certain circumstances, however, a received message cannot be completely displayed to the user of the device. For example, if a message has been corrupted during transmission due to being transmitted over a poor quality communication channel (e.g., a channel with a high level of interference), the communication device may not be able to properly decode the entire transmitted message. In such a case, the communication device can only display the portion of the message that has been decoded reliably. As another example, the communication device may have received an entire message reliably, but may not have enough memory available to store the entire message. Consequently, the communication device can only display the portion of the message that can be stored in memory.
To indicate to the user that a received message had to be truncated for some reason, the communication device appends a truncation symbol to the end of the displayed, truncated message. Prior art devices use the same truncation symbol to indicate the display of a truncated message, regardless of the cause of the truncation. Consequently, the user, upon viewing the truncation symbol, cannot determine the cause of the truncation and, therefore, cannot attempt to take corrective action to resolve the problem resulting in the truncation.
Therefore, a need exists for a communication device and method employed therein that indicates to a user of the communication device the cause for truncating a message when a truncated message is displayed.